"Islamophobia"
Gets the Headlines Despite Trailing Anti-Semitic Violence
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
December 18, 2017
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 When Donald Trump
officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel earlier this
month, many warned of repercussions and attacks against Jews. And
within days, a Muslim man carrying a Palestinian flag shattered the windows of a kosher restaurant in
Amsterdam. Soon after, Muslims in Malmo, Sweden, threw Molotov cocktails at
a Jewish cemetery and chanted,
"We are going to shoot the Jews." In the days that followed,
others burned Israeli and American flags in Stockholm, and in Gothenburg, a group hurled firebombs into a synagogue
during a party for Jewish teens. "Because of Trump," a Newsweek
headline declared, "People Are Burning Israeli
Flags And Attacking Jews."
But is it really "because of Trump" and the Jerusalem
decision?
Probably not.
Historically, controversial developments in Israel and
the West Bank have led to anti-Israel protests in Europe's Muslim
communities, and not infrequently, to violence against Jews. This is hardly surprising,
especially given the results of a June University of Oslo study which concluded that anti-Semitism in Europe was
highest among European Muslims.
Moreover, while much media focus has been on anti-Muslim violence and
so-called "Islamophobia" in recent years, less attention is given
to attacks against Jews which have been particularly high and significantly
more violent – and the situation is only getting worse. In the United
States, for instance, anti-Semitic incidents increased 86 percent in the first quarter of 2017
compared to the same period in 2016; in the UK, 2016 witnessed a record number of incidents, up 36 percent
over 2015; and in France, where, Newsweek reports, "anti-Semitic roots run deep within some
elements of the Muslim community," 40,000 Jews have fled the country since 2006 due to anti-Semitic
threats and violence. Among those acts of violence: the 2015 terror attack at the Hyper-Cacher kosher
supermarket, and the gruesome 2006 kidnapping and torture of 23-year-old Ilan Halimi.
And as recently as September three Muslim assailants held
a Jewish family hostage in their own home outside of Paris. "You are
Jews," they told their captives, who included a 78-year-old man and
his wife. "You have money." After beating the elderly man
repeatedly, the attackers fled the house with jewelry, credit cards, and
cash.
This is not to minimize the very real attacks on Muslims in the U.S. and
Europe in recent years. In the UK, for instance, officials counted 224
attacks on Muslims in the month following the Manchester terror attack, and a 40 percent increase in anti-Muslim crimes, following the attack on
London Bridge. And in Germany, which has seen some of the worst of it, 192
incidents were reported in the second quarter of this year alone, while in
2016, according to the German interior ministry, more than 3,500
incidents took place against Muslims in asylum shelters. By contrast, 2,083
crimes were reported against German Jews.
But there are significant differences between the attacks on Jews and
those on Muslims, the most glaring of which is the wide range of their
assailants. While white supremacists perpetrate attacks on Muslims, Jews
face violence from both white supremacist and Muslim groups. Not
surprisingly, then, according to FBI figures, Jews experience the most hate crimes of
all religious groups in the United States – a trend echoed in Canada, France, Australia, and elsewhere. And in Sweden, a New York Times op-ed notes, while anti-Semitism
historically was blamed on right-wing extremists, a 2013 study found that
"51 percent of anti-Semitic incidents in Sweden were attributed to
Muslim extremists. Only 5 percent were carried out by right-wing
extremists; 25 percent were perpetrated by left-wing extremists."
But you wouldn't necessarily know that to read the headlines. Following
the release of the 2016 FBI report, for instance, Vox announced: "A new FBI report says hate
crimes — especially against Muslims — went up in 2016" while CNN stated, "Hate crimes rose in 2016 – especially
against Muslims and whites." And a Guardian report on hate crimes in the UK
emphasized attacks on Muslims, yet made no mention to hate crimes against
Britain's Jews.
Also overlooked has been the nature of these crimes: though there is no
official, specific data analysis, anti-Jewish incidents worldwide tend to
be more violent than those against Muslims. While some UK mosques were firebombed
in after the Manchester and London Bridge attacks, for instance, there have
been no reported episodes of hostage-taking or murder (such as the 2014 attack
on four Jews at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, or the beating death of Sarah Halimi last April).
Writing in the Spectator, columnist Brendan O'Neill suggests one possible reason for this: "From Karen
Armstrong's insistence that the deli attack in Paris 'had nothing to do
with anti-Semitism' and rather was 'about Palestine' to various commentators'
claims that anti-Semitism in Europe is the inevitable byproduct of
Israel's antics in the Middle East, many very respectable people now
view assaults on Jews almost as a form of protest, as political rather than
hateful."
This could well be true. Or it could be that after a long history of
anti-Semitism, the public – and the writers of headlines – no longer see
anti-Jewish hate as being quite as newsworthy or dramatic or important. Or
perhaps it is a combination of these.
At the same time, while Israel (or, most recently, Trump's decisions
about Israel) is regularly blamed for inspiring attacks against the world's
Jews, rarely if ever does the media point to the catalysts for assaults on
Western Muslims: The Islamist terrorist attacks, often perpetrated by other
Western Muslims, that regularly precede them. Over and over, accounts of
hate crimes imply that attacks on Muslims are the fault of the attackers
and their hate, but the abuse of Jews is the fault of the Israelis or the
world's Jews.
Such narratives are not merely hypocritical; they perpetuate, even
escalate, the anti-Semitism they purportedly expose, and the hate that they
purportedly condemn. Hence, in 2015 according to the Oslo study,
"around 10,000 Jews left Western Europe for Israel, the largest number
to do so since 1948." And still, the violence continues.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.
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